news
11-15-2005Did some optimizing to let Google in.
1-31-2005
Look what a bad site dad I've been
left the house on fire
went to sleep in the garage.
5-30-2003 I apologize that the site has been a little fragmented for the past few days. I managed to let the hard drive fill up. All is well now. In addition, the site is now link sharing with Poetry Resources, a well done collection of poetry related links that is worth checking out if you are looking for new outlets for your creative expression or are a poetry geek trying to stay on top of things.
12-20-2002 Merry Xmas. Added some new sorts and a different navigation for the View Saved page. I apologize for how lame it was before. It's better I think.
6-18-2002 A new version of Open Source Poetry is in the works. Now is the time to make a feature request. Functionality in the works include an exquisite corpse manager. I've also been toying with the idea of collaborative fictional blogging. Before an official launch of any kind, a community section will be added to serve as open discussion for poetry, functionality, what have you. Watch for it.
8-6-2001 New feature. I'm pretty excited about this. There is now a suggest link which will suggest the next word for your line. This is a pretty tricky little beast that relies heavily on cookies. It won't work without them.
8-5-2001 Alright, so I've been a neglectful parent. I've been watching none-the-less. A little point: I'm not responsible for protecting rights to any material published here. As far as I'm concerned it's all up for graps, one big poetry stew. This provokes some interesting issues I've been waxing about of late: Where does open source bump heads with plagiarism? How does open source relate to public domain?
5-30-2001 Working out some glitches today, trying to track down the cause of the duplicate poems that some people have been getting. If anyone who has had this problem could give me some details, send me an email please. I can't seem to duplicate it. Send me browser, platform, etc. scott@bbkstudio.com
I've been rehashing some navigation issues. Most importantly, working on an editing mechanism. By clicking on an individual line in your poem, you enter an edit mode where the line can be updated or deleted. By clicking reset, normal mode resumes. I'll be updating the help files tomorrow.
Oh, the site was featured on LockerGnome. Here's a goofy little link:
5-4-2001 It's been a bit, but here's a new feature. Email a poem. From the poem view, click the link, fill out the form, off it goes. Let me know if anyone has any problems with it.
4-24-2001 Today is a good day. Added the ability to save lines from generated poems to the line list and also start a new poem using that line. Up next:
- suggest next word
4-22-2001 Beta testing a complete rewrite of the application today. Object-oriented, session management. This opens the door for lots of goodies.
No major changes on the front, but it'll be much easier for me to implement new features. Alright, I lied, there is the new Generate a poem feature. This breaks the lines down and tracks the associations between words then generates a 20 line poem from randomizing the associations. It works much like the front poem but at the word level. I'm still toying with it, but it's pretty interesting. I'll eventually allow these poems to be worked with.
I've been thinking about accounts - thereby giving the power to edit poems, maintain working drafts, email to friends, provide artist's statements, etc. It wouldn't be a requirement in general, but necessary if you want to edit poems or initiate a more focused collaboration. We'll see.
Some changes:
- this page has shuffled
- more statistics
- refined the front poem to be more time-sensitive
- refined some statistics to be more time-sensitive
- poem generation
- word tracking
4-16-2001 Uploaded first revisions and new features after a switch problem brought the site down Sunday. Had some wisdom teeth removed this morning. My timing is impeccable.
Some changes:
- Put a 50-character limit on the line pulldown
- Added a stanza break to the bottom of each of the pulldowns after line 1. This inserts the period that someone used which seems like a good idea
- Added some functionality to the saved poem index. They can be sorted and paged through now. After 50-some poems, it gets a bit long
- Added a few more statistics
- Took some steps to prevent duplicate saves
- Added rudimentary line edit option. (I'm reluctant to allow editing of lines, but this allows the creation of a new line based on an old one.)
- email your poem to a friend
- email a challenge to a friend
- email exquisite corpse
- mailing list for front poem
- object-oriented rewrite of code
- computer-generated lines to add to the mix
- accounts to provide controlled collaborations
It's come to my attention that not many people realize what the front poem is or that they make a contribution to it. Click here for details. If anyone has suggestions about expanding its intelligence, drop me a note. This was a quick implementation and has the flaw of building towards solidity, which is interesting as a poem derived from the collective, but has the habit of clinging to the oldest lines without exploring newer beginnings. I have some things I'll do to grow this once I'm confident all the annoying bugs have been squished.
FYI: I built this site over the weekend at the beginning of April in honor of National Poetry Month. It's been live since April 9th.
Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL.
Thanks to Julie Ridl, Kevin Budelman, Jeff Sikkema, Mike Carnevale, Christine Stephens and all the folks at BBK.
Scott Krieger